Welcome to the club.  I was very much stuck in the "Excel" mindset when I started out.  A spreadsheet is very easy for me to visualize, but over time, I figured out that it was unwieldy for large datasets.  Access is where I had go when the spreadsheet became too big to fit on my desk.  It is just a different method to organize your data and is more efficient for large sets of data.

I kind of think of access like a set of file cabinets.  Each file cabinet is like a table, each individual file is like a record, and the label on the file tab is like a primary key.  E.g., each order file in the order cabinet will have no customer information in it except for the reference to the appropriate customer file in the customer cabinet.  

Richard talks about using the office examples most often because that is where he has the most consulting experience and the needs of most of his students lie.  Access is definitely well suited for many other uses but many of the examples would be confusing for people not familiar with those settings.  For example, I work in the power generation industry and I have tables for instruments, drawings, points, calibrations, and control loops.  Examples like this might be confusing to people without experience in my industry.

In my case, it has taken time and patience to change the way I think about organizing and retrieving my data.  Fortunately, I have enjoyed the learning process and the teacher.

The advice that they always give the authors is "write what you know." It's the same thing for teachers; we teach what we know. I know retail and typical standard office-type work. That's my history and my background.

I know absolutely nothing about the power generation industry, so I would have to learn that entire business in order to be able to build a database for it, which I have done in the past. I knew nothing about the industrial chemicals business, but I got a consulting job working for a company that produced lubricants back in the 90s, and I had to learn that entire industry before I could properly build them a database. It took me weeks before I even touched a keyboard, LOL.

But sure, Sarah, if there are things you'd like to learn how to do with a database, let me know, and I'll see if I can put something together. I love attacking new problems. I think now, with my 30 years of experience, I can pretty much look at a scenario, and my head already starts spinning ideas on how to put the tables and stuff together.